Don't Be a Snob, Part 1

You go back through history and you find in every generation the problems exist.

I mean, can you imagine the stain on our own culture? You go back in American history just 50 years where a white man wouldn't drink from the same water fountain as a black man. They didn't eat in the same restaurant. And they certainly, for goodness sake, didn't go to the same church. I've often wondered in my mind, where were the pastors? Where were the expositors just 50 years ago? Where was James chapter two?

I'll tell you where it was right here. In history, humans have had a problem obeying God, especially when it comes to loving people who are different from us. The Bible is clear. There is no place for racial or cultural prejudice. One passage that makes this clear is James 2.

It could be summarized like this. Christians, when you go to church on Sunday, leave your prejudices and biases and cultural stereotypes and clicks at the door. And when you leave, make sure you don't pick them back up again. Today, Stephen begins a short series from James 2 called The Law of Love. He's called this first lesson, Don't Be a Snob. I assume, I guess, they're watching this.

The evidence is fully substantiated. By the age of two, a child, they have discovered, they being the researchers, can identify brand names and not only identify things by their brand name, desire them over and above those things without a brand name. So if you think you have a problem with a 13-year-old or a 14-year-old, go all the way back to the age of two. In fact, by the age of three, the child will be capable of pressuring his parents to purchase items based solely on peer popularity rather than the need or even the inherent value in the item. So little children are now telling their parents and advertisers are catching on. Advertisers, they've caught on for some time. They're telling their parents which automobile to purchase and drive, where to go out to eat, where to go to school, what to put in their lunchbox when they go and what to wear as they head off to school. There is an education taking place that overpowers their education.

Little wonder that more than $1 billion is spent annually on advertising targeting preschoolers and down. From automobiles to entertainment to clothing to food. You see, our culture has identified a particular defect in our human nature and has defined marketing strategy to manipulate it. It is the desire to not only fit in but be viewed as superior to those around us. In short, status is golden. What you have matters more than who you are and two-year-olds are picking up on it. This defect, of course, continues to play out as children get older and then turn into young adults and then older adults. It goes by any number of names. You can call it classism.

Classism is what level of society you belong to or racism, what nationality you came from, culturalism, what it is about you that causes you to fit in or not to fit in. And it is the Christian who approaches these issues with an utterly different approach and perspective. Why? Because we understand that God never intended the Bible to adapt to contemporary society. In fact, we would expect culture to view this book as anything but relevant. God never intended the Bible to adapt to contemporary culture. He intended the Bible to create an entirely different culture, a new culture made up of many ethnic groups but one culture, one race, one holy priesthood, 1 Peter 2.9. That's why James redefines in rather stunning words what pure and undefiled religion is. How many of we ask the average person on the street, what do you think really genuine, pure religion is?

They'd rattle off all kind of things. They're demonstrating the needs of orphans and widows. In other words, genuine Christianity loves and cares for people who cannot earn your compassion. They have absolutely nothing to offer you. They can't enhance your reputation.

They don't add anything to your resume or your portfolio. Your love and care for them is sheer grace. Now, James goes on in his letter in Chapter 2 to these scattered Jewish Christians to deliver another rather mind-blowing, culture-shifting, culture-creating statement. His statement is in verse 1. He writes, My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.

You can render that partiality or prejudice. In other words, social clicks and Jesus Christ do not mix. Paul wrote to the Romans in Chapter 2, verse 11, saying, God is no respecter of persons. He's no respecter.

There's no favoritism. Jesus Christ, you see, my friends, was anything but a snob. He never walked around with his nose in the air, even though, mind you, he is the Son of God.

If anybody had the right to look down on anybody would be him. And yet he was as kind to the Samaritan woman at the well as he was to Nicodemus. He was as gracious to the woman with the issue of blood that came in touch to him of his garment as he was to Jairus who was standing there impatiently waiting for him to go home with him to heal his daughter. He was as available to blind Bartimaeus as he was the rich young ruler. He gave the outcasts and untouchables as much an offer of salvation as he gave to the scribes and Pharisees. His overriding concern was the condition of their soul, which had all value. See, James is writing here to Christians and he effectively says, Do the same thing.

Think the same way. Partiality and Christianity are incompatible. That was interesting if we dig a little deeper here, which we'll do, to discover that the original word translated personal favoritism.

Yours may be rendered partiality in verse one as a compound word and it never, ever, not once appears or occurs outside of the New Testament. It's as if God the Spirit created a word that he expected this culture to live out, never expecting the world to live it out. And if you take the words that are squeezed together and you expand them out, a wooden translation would literally be, Don't hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ with the receiving of someone's face. It came to refer early in the etymology within the Christian church to somebody that was accepted based on their face.

That was literally how attractive they were. Which is interesting because even in the coming of Jesus Christ, who could choose how he would look, chose to be unattractive, a rather ordinary looking Jewish man. So much so that if you walked into the room, Isaiah said, we wouldn't be attracted to him. We wouldn't esteem him.

We wouldn't think he was anything special. The word developed into the idea of giving someone attention and favor based on their status, their education, their race, their wealth, their rank, regardless of the merit of their character. And I love the way the Amplified Bible cuts right to the core of what James is saying in our language so we understand. And it's offensive, it's confrontive, but that's why we've come here today.

The Amplified Bible expands it this way. Stop holding the faith of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with snobbery. Don't be a snob. And the reason he has to say that is because they're snobs. You're a snob and I'm a snob. I'm glad you came so I could tell you, you're a snob.

And so am I. We tend, we drift in that direction. So this is one of those culture shifting, culture creating declarations. Something is going to radically change for the believer who wants to grow up.

Stop being a snob. I've had it in my file for some time highlighting the writings of Hesiod, a poet who lived about 750 years before the birth of Christ. He was just revered.

He and Homer along, those two guys were just revered. Whatever they said was it, you know, gospel truth. He wrote, and I quote, love those who love you. Help those who help you. Give to those who give to you, never to those who do not.

I like that religion. I can do that. I'm going to try, but I believe I can. Ladies and gentlemen, that's how the world works. That's life. And you might think, well, get over it.

No, don't. Jesus Christ effectively turns that thinking upside down and right side up when he says effectively this, you've heard it said, you know, do unto others as they do unto you. You've been quoting Hesiod for 750 years. But I say to you, do unto others as you would like for them to do to you, even if they don't return the favor, which is Christ's idea.

Matthew Chapter seven, verse 12. Listen, this issue is as real in the 21st century as it was in the first century when James was writing this letter. Don't fall back. Don't drift back. Now that you're redeemed into classism and racism and culturalism, don't bow to status.

Don't pant after brand names. Don't focus on the social register or image or appearance, because if you do, you will not be prepared to reform the corresponding attitudes and actions of partiality and prejudice and pigeonholing everybody into stratified categories. See, those attitudes and those actions in the mind of James would reveal sort of as exhibit A that this person may be in Christ, but he is not growing up in Christ. And I say that he may be in Christ because James is using an imperative in verse one that can literally be translated, stop. Stop it. Stop thinking that way. Stop holding your faith in Christ with an attitude of partiality.

He said it because they were doing it. See, the problem in the church he pastored there in Jerusalem and the church was very young, but they had a problem right off the bat. Jews didn't like Gentiles.

They'd get up in the morning and they pray, God, thank God not a Gentile. And Gentiles, of course, didn't like Jews. And it exists in every generation. In fact, every culture I have traveled around the world enough to see it, the prejudices between the Mexicans and the Puerto Ricans. Very real in this community, between Taiwanese and mainland Chinese, between Hispanics and blacks, between whites and blacks, between the Japanese and the Chinese, between the Hutus and Tutsi tribes of East Africa who are killing each other. And the press has come up with this horrible phrase they coined called ethnic cleansing. It's killing because of prejudice is what it is. This is receiving someone by their face.

This is favoritism based on status and image and race and wealth and whatever. Well, then what happens? We have people from every tongue tribe, every nation in the same communities, they get saved. They come to faith in Jesus Christ. They come into the assembly of believers and they, like everyone before them, they may have been redeemed by Christ, but they still entered the church with baggage. Listen, we have all come to church carrying the luggage of our former lives.

And there are ways that we think that have to be absolutely reformed. Why there's power in the truth of God's Word and the menu is balanced as we go through books of the Bible. Because why we import into the church our former education and the world's perspective on brand names and value judgments, it ultimately gets transferred onto people who get classified and codified and categorized as who's who and who's not.

According to James, our unity and acceptance and love has nothing to do with our face. It has everything to do with our faith. But this kind of favoritism was taking place and the church is brand new.

Jesus Christ, the clouds have barely come back together. The Holy Spirit's barely descended. The church is created. Three thousand people come to faith in Jesus Christ and you have the very first church division and the complaint begins to rise.

And what is it over? It is over the prejudicial preferential treatment in the church toward Hebrew widows over the care given to Grecian widows. You see, it didn't take long for people to unpack their baggage in the church sanctuary. It didn't take long for the church to develop first class seating and coach seating. The Jews were in first class and the Gentiles were in coach where people sit closer together than they do their spouses.

I know. I saw it again. I flew to New Hampshire on coach and I'll tell you, the last time I sat that close to anybody, I was proposing marriage. In fact, all of Southwest, unfortunately, is coach and the lady next to me and we alternated sitting up, sitting back so we could we could breathe. Somebody actually told me I'm standing in line.

I think it was at the airport. I said, you know, they're talking about creating a different seat that will save three inches. And I thought, oh, is that possible? And he said, well, what they're going to do, they're literally thinking about bending them. That's not a seat.

That's a saddle. Speaking of seating arrangements, James moved from his opening statement of verse one to a seating problem in verse two. Look at the scenario he creates for us. And by the way, the implication most Greek scholars believe was that this had happened for if a man class condition is he has comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes. And there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes. Now, stop a second before the usher seats them.

Get this picture in your mind. The language of James scenario indicates that these men come in while the church service is already in progress. The word translated assembly. It's the word synagogue from synagogue. James also uses the word ecclesia over in Chapter five, which we typically think of as church. The use of both words indicates even further that James was written early in the history of the Christian church and the canon of scripture. At any rate, these two men come into the service late.

The service has already started proving this was a Baptist assembly when they got there. The first man is wearing a gold ring. And you need to understand that someone wearing gold rings would be showing off status and wealth, in fact, based on how many rings they were wearing.

So James is presenting a man of rank and power and money. He's actually using a word that literally means gold fingered. The wearing of rings for men and women in both Jew and Gentile cultures was acceptable. However, a man of wealth we know from history would wear rings on his left hand and on every finger.

His fingers would be golden, so to speak. This would be an ostentatious display of wealth. And if you weren't that wealthy and you wanted people to think you were wealthy, like when you go back to your high school reunion, you could actually rent rings from shops in Rome where you could have one on every finger and show to people that I really made it.

The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote in the first century that wealthy men adorned their fingers with rings and gems were arranged on every joint. You know, this became a problem. And then the practical outworking of the church leaders, they had to deal with this and they did.

In fact, Clement of Alexandria, a church leader serving about 100 years after James wrote this letter, he actually urged and the leadership decided that here's how we'll show that we are distinctive. They urged the believers to wear only one ring to keep from any kind of ostentatious display of wealth. You see, they had a problem.

And here comes this guy. They had a problem with bling all the way back to the first century. I mean, he had it. James also says in verse two that he was wearing fine clothing.

The word for fine Islam is giving us the transliterated word lamp. He's literally wearing shining clothing. More than likely, he's wearing the shining expensive white garments that wealthy Jewish men wore in this culture. And he comes late to church, maybe on purpose.

We don't know. But this guy is decked out. He comes into church looking like the gemstone cowboy. And so he shows everybody I'm it. Everybody look, I've arrived. And what does the church do?

Well, we'll look at it in a minute. But first, let's deal with a poor man. He comes to church late to maybe because he didn't want to be seen. It says here in the text, verse two, that he was dressed in dirty clothes. He was a poor man. The word for poor, tokas, is a word we'd use of a homeless man. It isn't that he didn't have a lot of money.

It said he had no money. See, in this scenario, James is creating two polar opposites in every possible way. The problem isn't that one's rich and one's poor.

The problem is how people responded. There's another contrast here in its clothing. James says the poor man's clothing was dirty. The word could be rendered filthy. He can't afford a bath.

He got his clothing probably from the nearest alley or the trash bin. He literally stinks. He's beyond down and out. Unlike the first man, he has no connection. He has no money.

He has no status. He has no faith. He has nothing to benefit the Christians gathered in that assembly. And by the way, he is not coming to church to get money. The implication that most scholars believe is that both the rich man and the poor man are unbelievers and they've come to the assembly.

They might not have known what time it started. Just as many of you don't. They're coming in because they're curious.

We've heard about this and we want to know what's going on. Now watch what happens. Verse 3, you pay special attention to the one who was wearing the fine clothes and say, you sit here in a good place and you say to the poor man, you stand over there or you sit down here by my footstool. You pay the rich man special attention. James says, you pay him special attention. Literally you stare at him. To help us understand the word I think would be good to use would be gawk. You gawk at him. Everybody is watching him. One Greek scholar says the verb has the nuance of covetousness. And I thought that was very interesting. The nuance of envy. In other words, everybody's looking at him and saying in their heart, man, does he have it made or what? Wow. I know he's an unbeliever.

I probably shouldn't think this, but I'd like a little bit of his life. To this day, Greek Orthodox churches in Greece don't have auditoriums like we do with pews and chairs. There are some chairs along the walls for those who need to sit down. There are some benches up front and those are reserved for prominent guests or prominent members. In fact, the early practice was to rent them out. You literally bought your seat. They came over to Europe.

England came then by way of England to America. If you've ever been to an old church, you'll notice they have gates, little gates at every pew and you'd have a key. You bought it. You have the right to that pew. Nobody else can sit there. That's your pew. That's your seat.

I know none of you feel that way, but this is the way it was back then. You'd open that door and you'd go in and you'd sit at your pew and they cost a little bit differently as you move toward the front. The expensive seats were down front unlike today where they would be where? In the back, right. Down where you guys have the best seats in the house.

You're thinking, I'm not sure, but you did. The poor people were segregated in a way in the English and American churches so that they couldn't even see the pulpit and the pulpit couldn't see them. They're just tucked away. Pastors in early American history made news when they offered to free up the pews so that anybody could come. You read the biographies as I have of John Wesley and George Whitfield who created scandalous news in the early 1700s by saying, okay, if they can't get in because they couldn't afford to buy or rent a pew, we're going to go out in the field and we're going to preach to them out there. And so thousands, tens of thousands would come to hear them preach.

One historian spoke of Wesley preaching the gospel to 30,000 coal miners at dawn one day in the fields and their tears of repentance were streaming white trails down their coal darkened faces. They couldn't get into church. They weren't connected. They didn't have money. They weren't considered respectable. They were different. They don't belong in here. They don't fit.

You go back through history and you find in every generation the problems exist and within cultures, I mean, can you imagine the stain on our own culture? You go back in American history just 50 years where a white man wouldn't drink from the same water fountain as a black man. They didn't eat in the same restaurant. They didn't shop in the same stores.

They didn't swim in the same pool. And they certainly for goodness sake, didn't go to the same church. I've often wondered in my mind, where were the pastors? Where were the expositors just 50 years ago? Where was James chapter two? I'll tell you where it was right here.

It hadn't gone anywhere. In fact, you know how wonderful it is to have, we'll have in here white people and black people. We'll have folks from India. We'll have Mexicans and Portuguese and Chinese and Japanese and Taiwanese all in the same services today. And I want to tell you that made this spirit grow and serve as evidence that cultural norms can be toppled by the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ.

At the foot of the cross, there are no divisions. Every one of us approaches Christ exactly the same way. We come as sinners in need of the saving grace of God. God makes us one in Christ. He commands that we reflect that unity in the way we live.

This is an important topic and an important passage and we want to understand it thoroughly. We're just about out of time today. So we're going to stop here and we'll resume this lesson on our next broadcast. You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart. This is the Bible teaching ministry of pastor and author Stephen Davey. You can learn more about our ministry and access all of the resources we have available at our website. You'll find us at wisdomonline.org. This lesson and the complete archive of Stephen's teaching is all posted there. We'd like to send you updates about our ministry and keep you informed about what God is doing. If you don't receive those, call us today because we'd like to sign you up to receive the next three issues of our monthly magazine, Heart to Heart. Each issue features a specific topic related to the Christian life. Each issue also includes a devotional guide for that month. Stephen's son, Seth, writes devotionals that are theologically rich and filled with practical insight for your life.

Call us at 866-48-BIBLE if you'd like to see it for yourself. We're out of time, but join us again next time for more Wisdom for the Heart. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.